Leading fresh, raw pet food company, Poppy’s Picnic recently celebrated its second year in business with a beautiful poppy seed and lemon birthday cake made by Karen’s Cake Creations of Trowbridge.

The cake depicted the inspiration behind the brand, Chief Operating Dog and miniature schnauzer, Poppy (who also just celebrated her ninth birthday) sitting on top of a Poppy’s Picnic hamper.

In just two years the company has become firmly established as one of the leading players in the raw food market starting with an appearance on BBC 2’s Dragon’s Den when founder Dylan Watkins and Director Louise Mackintosh, received four investment offers from the Since then, the company has managed to raise over £600,000 in crowd funding and gone on to win numerous trade and industry awards.

The company was awarded ‘Start-up of the Year’ at both the Wiltshire Business and Business Leader Awards and three of their products were awarded Highly Commended at the pet industry’s PetQuip Awards. Poppy’s Picnic also recently won ‘Business Start-up of the Year’ for the South West region at the prestigious Rural Business Awards and now go on to represent the South West at the national finals. Dylan Watkins reached the finals of both NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards and received a prestigious ‘Innovator of the Year’ shortlisting at the British Small Business Awards. The company also reached the finals of the Pet Industry Federation Awards with two of their products.

Poppy’s Picnic’s products are now widely stocked in pet retailers throughout the UK and can be found in the company’s vibrant pink branded freezers in-store. Their customer retail base in growing rapidly every day and they are now exporting to, and stocking supermarket shelves in Hong Kong and China – the first of the raw food manufacturers to do so.

The company has benefited from participating in the NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator programme and Dylan Watkins was also recently selected to join the esteemed Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses scheme and has been attending business seminars at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Poppy’s Picnic has ambitious plans for the future. A new production facility is currently being built in Wiltshire and the company is due to launch its new range of cat food early next year.

Dylan Watkins believes that simplicity – or RAWPLICITY as he calls it – is the key to Poppy Picnic’s success:

“RAWPLICITY is behind everything that we do at Poppy’s Picnic. From producing recipes that include the best quality, natural ingredients. Our aim from the start has been to make it easier for pet owners to feed the food nature intended and make a change to their dog’s life. Just as humans are advised to avoid processed to reduce the risk of disease and obesity, the same applies to dogs. We believe that any fresh food in a dog’s diet is better than none and our delicious products are easy to introduce, whether choosing to make a complete switch to raw feeding, or add an occasional boost of freshness to dry or canned food. Our popular innovations such as perfectly portioned Meatballs, and our strong, stand out brand has helped us to achieve all that we have so far.”